I lost 12 pounds

Those first few weeks after returning home from China were a blur of tantrums, sleepless nights and jet lag. The physical and emotional toll of the trip really caught up with me. After two days Keith went back to working 12 hours a day 6 days a week. After two weeks the older children went back to school. It was just me and Autumn. All. Day. Long.

Before bringing her home I thought going back to having a 2 year old at home would be a breeze. I did it before, I could do it again, right? WRONG. I sunk into a DEEP depression. What I didn't know before is that postpartum depression happens post adoption too. This leads me to think that it's a reaction to environmental change, not a reaction to hormonal changes like everyone says. 

This is very hard for me to share because a part of me is embarrassed that this was so difficult. The logical part of me says that it's silly to feel embarrassed. It wasn't as though I chose to become depressed, it just sort of.......happened.  It happened in the same way that a person gets hit by a train; fast, hard and without warning. I can remember sitting and staring at a plate of eggs and not being able to physically move myself to eat them. That was the moment. I felt like myself before that moment. That was two days after we got home.

Mentally, I had prepared myself for a really rough time in China. The trip was definitely not easy but, for some reason, I had absolutely no problem handling it. I was never overly emotional and adapted well to sudden changes in plans and long hours in the hotel room with nothing to do. It was all a-okay, no problemo! That's because I knew it was temporary. I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. What I actually found at the end of the tunnel was darkness.

One day after arriving back in the USA

It wasn't all doom and gloom. We got along well as a new family of five. We went to the playground a lot and Autumn got along really great with her new brother and sister. They spent hours on the trampoline together and laughed a lot.  

The problem was me.  All me. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep and I lived with a huge rock in my stomach all the time. I lost 12 pounds. My feelings of anxiety consumed everything and I could hardly function and could feel nothing else. It was immensely perplexing because I couldn't pinpoint a cause and I had never felt quite like that ever before. 

So overwhelmed with these emotions, I couldn't bond with my new child. In fact, I started to blame her (or my decision to adopt her) for the way I felt. Then I started feeling guilty for blaming her. Then I blamed Keith for letting me go through with adoption. Then I felt guilty for thinking that too. I had a laundry list of negative thoughts, each one followed by guilt. It was a vicious cycle that I couldn't escape. Anxiety. Guilt. Depression. Anxiety. Guilt. Depression. What was happening to me?!

It got to the point where I was having thoughts of hurting myself. I went to the doctor, I got medication for the anxiety but it made me more depressed. I stopped taking the medication. Then, I went to therapy and it changed my life (more on that in a future post.)

Thanks to a lot of hard work, prayer and support from many friends and family members I'm happy to say that I have found my way out of the darkness. This experience has fundamentally changed who I am as a person. I feel different and I view the world differently. I'm not sure if it's a good change or not. Time will tell.

Who could blame her?

See this picture? This is what our daughter's adoption looked like one year ago today. This sweet little girl was scared out of her mind.  She didn't want to leave the only caretakers she had ever known and live with complete strangers who spoke a different language.

Who could blame her?

She had been screaming and writhing for at least 10 minutes in my arms. She had the inhuman strength of a toddler in full tantrum. I could scarcely hold onto her. Sweat was dripping down my back.  If I put her down she would run away looking for her "aunties" (that's what she called her former caretakers.) If she found them we had to separate her from them all over again. It was unimaginably heartbreaking.

We were not allowed leave the civil affairs building with our daughter that day until we took a family picture to be printed for our adoption decree (a legal document proving our status as her parents.) "Say cheese!" This was the best picture they could get.

Before traveling to China, I read the books, listened to the podcasts and took the webinars. They all said to be prepared for your child to not want to come with you, especially a toddler in a foreign country. I was not prepared for this. Nothing could ever prepare anyone for a day like that day.

Remembering this day doesn't make me feel like celebrating. It makes me want to cry. This is the ugly truth that nobody wants to tell you:

Adoption is pain. Adoption is tragedy. Adoption is harder than you can ever imagine.

But it's also totally worth it.

Top row: Her second day with us, showing her defiant side, at the playground
Middle row: First pic of all three siblings together, at the playground, in China after a week with us
Bottom row: Getting to know big sister, showing her silly side, soap mohawk in the tub 

If we lived in the deep south

This last week I was reminded why diversity matters, especially for a family like ours.

We were driving home from a family reunion in Alabama. We stopped at a Sheetz gas station in southern Virginia for a quick dinner. If you've been to a Sheetz it's better than your average gas station food and more like a fast food place. They had some nice little outdoor tables with umbrellas. It was a beautiful evening so we ate outside.

At the table next to us there was a caucasian family with two young children. As we sat there and ate our dinner a little old lady walked by and said to the other family, "you have such beautiful children!" Their table and our table were very close to each other and she had to walk right by us as well. She looked at us, paused, and walked by without saying a word. We even smiled at her and she avoided eye contact. "That was interesting," said Keith.

The way we were sitting she could only see the back of Noah and Allison's heads. She had a perfect view of me and Keith with Autumn sitting on his lap. Perhaps she didn't consider Chinese children to be beautiful. Or maybe, she didn't know what to say because it was something she had never seen before. Maybe she was trying to figure out why we couldn't find any white kids to adopt. There I go assuming negative thought bubbles.

It didn't really offend me and we actually laughed about it afterward. It reminded me to be grateful to live where we live. There's enough diversity in the Baltimore/DC suburbs that, most of the time, people don't behave that way. I imagine that if we lived in the deep south that Autumn would always struggle to fit in. 

For a transracial adoptee, it's extremely important to feel accepted by your community as well as by your family.

All my kids are beautiful.

Begin with the end in mind

Wednesday morning I woke up at 5:30 with a feeling of dread.  My plan was to get to the US State Department right at 8:00 to pick up our Chinese adoption papers (aka our dossier.) From there I had to find a place to make copies of the entire 84 page document then head over to the Chinese embassy and submit them for the final authentication step. Before the day even started I had an ominous feeling that it wasn't going to go well.

So, I did what I have always been taught to do: I prayed. I asked God to help make the day go smoothly and that I would get things done quickly and completely and then I set out.

When I got to the State Department it was just after 8:00 and there was already a line, but it was short. I was in and out in about 15 minutes. I asked a security guard where the nearest copy shop was and he directed me to a bookstore but they were not open. I used the map app on my phone and walked to three other shops, all of which were out of business. Finally, just after 9:00am, I found a UPS store. The gentleman at the counter said, "I've seen this before, I know how to do it." Then he informed me that he would charge $1 per page because he was not allowed to remove the staples. If he removed the staples and re-stapled them then the Chinese embassy would reject the dossier because it would look as though it had been tampered with. Since he was the only game in town I begrudgingly agreed to pay the $1 per page. Then he said to come back in an hour.

It was 10:00 by the time I got my papers back. I had lost 1 hour 45 minutes and $84 getting the necessary copies of our dossier. But I kept my chin up, I needed to head to the embassy and get this done and, darn it, I was going to get it done that day!

I plugged "Chinese embassy" into my map app and drove to the address it provided. The internet failed me again but I didn't realize it until I parked 2 blocks away from the wrong building, walked around for 10 minutes, and had to ask someone for help. It turned out I had driven to the apartment building where they house the Chinese ambassadors.

So, I walked back to my car and drove another 15 minutes to the correct location. It was just after 11:00 when I took a number and waited to be helped. I will never forget my number, B585, because I stared at it for 3 long hours. As I sat there, my anxiety rose steadily. Autumn was staying at a friend's house and I had expected to be back by lunch time. My friend was so nice about it and said she could stay longer. I was worried about getting home in time for the older two to get home from school. Also, there was rush hour traffic to worry about.

As I was sitting there CNN was playing on the televisions in the embassy. It was right in front of me so I couldn't help but watch. They were reporting about the little boy who was taken by an alligator and alternating that with the Orlando shooting and speeches by the current presidential candidates. It was incredibly depressing.

Finally, at approximately 2:00 my number was up. I went up and gave the lady our dossier. She proceeded to shuffle through them and scrutinized each page. She found one page (not an original) that was not up to their standards, handed back the entire pile of papers and rejected my submission. I had to go make a new copy of that one page and return and take a new number.

The embassy is open until 5:00 so I decided I was not going home without getting this done. No way, no how. So I found a FedEx store two blocks away and redid that one page and headed back to the embassy. Little did I know, their business hours are until 5:00 but they stop handing out numbers at 2:30. It was 2:42 when I made it back. There was no way I could get it done that day.

I walked out into the bright sunlight of the afternoon and wanted to scream with frustration. Also, I was so starving that I was almost ready to eat my own arm. I called Keith and told him that I was going to grab a quick bite to eat and then head home. That wonderful man had picked up Autumn and was home waiting for Noah and Allison's school bus.

The nearest restaurant was Einsteins Bagels. As I was entering I lost my composure and started crying. This was not just a sniffle and a few tears, but full on sobbing, ugly, uncontrollable crying. I couldn't even pull myself together enough to order food so I found a table in the corner and put my head down on my arms.

After a few minutes, one of the employees came and sat next to me and put her arm around me. She asked me what was wrong and I told her I was having a bad day. She asked if I had eaten that day and I told her I hadn't since 6:00 that morning. She asked what I wanted and I said I didn't know, maybe just a plain bagel with cream cheese. She said no, that I needed a real meal and proceeded to make me a sandwich with chips and a drink. I offered to pay and she said, "no, it's free. I just want you to have a good day." She was right when she said that I would feel better after I had something to eat.

The kindness shown to me by these strangers helped to ease the frustration and emotional exhaustion of the day. That morning I had prayed that things would go smoothly, but they didn't. The Lord had a different plan. He used my bad day to create an opportunity for someone else to do good. It was truly a humbling experience.

As I went to my car Keith sent me this text. -------------------------->

How blessed I am to be surrounded by people who help me to begin with the end in mind.

The next morning I went back to the embassy and our dossier was accepted.

Always Carry Cash

This week I have been working on our dossier for our next Chinese adoption. The process isn't too difficult, it just has a LOT of steps. I had to collect 20 different documents including things like police clearances, home study, medical certifications etc. The Chinese government knows more about us than we know about ourselves. This packet of 20 documents has to go through a serious of authentications. Not every page has to go through every step so that can be tricky to navigate. But, most of the papers go through this process:

Public Notary witnesses the original signature
County Clerk authenticates that the notary is legit ($1 per document)
Secretary of State authenticates that the county clerk is legit ($2 per document)
US State Department authenticates that the Secretary of State is legit ($8 per document)
Chinese Consulate authenticates that the US State Department is legit ($25 per document)

It's INSANE. Last go round we paid the adoption agency extra to take care of all the authentication steps and it was worth every penny. (We have a different agency this time and they don't offer that service.) This is an unbelievable amount of legwork.

On Monday we got the last piece of the puzzle so I could start this marathon of authentication. Autumn and I took all the papers to the Howard County Clerk's office then drove to Annapolis to the Secretary of State. I was feeling pretty good about my paper pushing abilities until I got home and double checked everything. I had ONE letter that was notarized in Baltimore City. The Howard County Clerk overlooked that little detail (so did I.)  I had Howard County vouching for Baltimore City which they have no authority to do. It also invalidated my Secretary of State authentication. (Yay! Another 45 minute drive to Annapolis!)

So, today I drove to the Baltimore City Courthouse and it was very......well, interesting.

Howard County only accepts checks, the Secretary of State only accepts credit cards, and (you guessed it) Baltimore City only accepts cash. I didn't know about that last part.

I never carry cash. I literally did not have ONE DOLLAR to pay for this letter to be authenticated.

The lady at the Baltimore City Courthouse directed me to the nearest ATM 2 blocks away. I went to that location and the building was closed for construction. At this point, it was approaching lunchtime and Autumn was complaining that she was hungry and I REALLY had to pee.

I found a little deli to buy Autumn a snack and got up to the register but there was a minimum $5 charge for debit card purchases. I either had to buy 3 bags of chips or none at all. I put the chips back and we hit the potty. When we came out of the bathroom a nice man who was behind us in line had bought Autumn her chips. The kindness of this stranger was the only thing that kept my head level.

We found ourselves wandering around downtown Baltimore in search of an ATM. Finally, I found one in a little Chinese restaurant down a dodgy-looking ally. By this point we were five blocks away from the courthouse. Autumn was as happy as a clam meandering along and munching on her BBQ potato chips without a care in the world. She really is such an easy going kid.

After returning to the courthouse we discovered that the lady who sent me to the ATM to get a dollar was on her lunch break. This is important because she had told me to come directly to her window so that I didn't have to wait in line a second time.

We ended up at a different person's window and he took my letter and he authenticated it for me. I tried to hand him my $20 bill to pay the fee and he said, "nah, don't worry about it."

We sat in those seats just yesterday

Recently, our family was invited to an information session at the adoption agency who helped us adopt our little girl. We were there to tell all about our journey and to answer questions.

In March of 2014 we were those people. A family came and spoke to the group and told of how they adopted their little boy from Ethiopia. He was so cute. I remember feeling awe and wonderment at this family formed out of tragedy. They had taken their own tragedy of infertility and their son's tragedy of not being with his first parents and turned it into something positive. I desperately wanted what they had.

A few weeks ago we WERE that family. I was super nervous. What would they think of us? Would they look at our family and wish they had what we have? That's what I was wishing when I was them. Would they think we were selfish for adopting a child when we already had two birth children? Would they ask hard questions? Or worse, no questions at all.

Would our three children behave themselves? They were fighting in the car on the way there and my husband and I joked that the people would see us and think, "never mind, we don't want kids after all."

I shared things with this group of strangers that I don't often share. We talked about our original plans to have children and how we had wanted six. We talked about secondary infertility and about what led us to adopt from China. I talked about post-adoption depression (just as real as post-partem depression, my friends.)

I talked about God and the role of faith on our journey. I said this to a room full of strangers. That was scary.

I wanted to tell them that we sat in those seats just yesterday. My favorite question was, "would you do it again?" I was so happy to say, "yes, we are already in the process!"

I would do it a hundred more times if I could.

I hope they invite us back to speak again.

Sometimes I feel nothing

I was raised in the Mormon church and have remained a faithful member into adulthood. One of my favorite aspects of my faith is the concept of personal revelation. We are encouraged to pray and talk to God as though he were sitting in the room with us. We have the opportunity to develop a personal relationship with God. It's kind of amazing if you really think about it.

Personal revelation can come in many forms. For me, I receive feelings of peace when I know I'm doing what's right. Sometimes I pray and the answer is no and I feel anxious or confused. Sometimes I feel nothing. Those are probably the most difficult times, when He doesn't answer.

Why didn't I get an answer? 

Heavenly Father wants us to choose for ourselves, that's why we have agency. If we go to Him with every decision He will sometimes withhold guidance. Is it because the decision we make isn't important enough for Him to intercede? I think not.

For example, in my single days I attended a scripture study class and we discussed this very topic at great length. The teacher was talking about marriage and choosing a spouse. He said that if you are dating someone and you think you might want to marry them and you pray, the Lord is not going to tell you yes. Is this because who you marry is not important? No. (Who you marry is a very important decision and if you were about to make a HUGE mistake I think God would probably let you know.) But, He won't necessarily tell you yes for a very good reason.

Sometimes in life there are too many unknowns for Heavenly Father to micromanage our every decision. The biggest variable is our own agency. If He tells us to do something and we screw it up then we are naturally going to blame God when it's really our own fault.

When Keith took his current job it set us on a very good path that led to a great community and allowed us to adopt not one but two kids from China. After we had dinner with the people who wanted to hire Keith I had a pit in my stomach for months. I didn't want things to change but I knew I had to support my husband and that it was the right thing to do. Did Heavenly Father make the decision for me? No. I had to choose for myself to do what I knew was right.

There have been periods of time since moving where I have felt angry and bitter and it's been hard on our family. If Heavenly Father had told us to move and take this job I could have very easily blamed Him for my unhappiness when the blame really fell on me. I get to decide to make the best of it. I get to choose to be happy and find the good. Instead of blaming God, I turn to Him for support and He's there. He's always there.

Yay!

Special Needs

I've grown to dislike the term, "special needs." It implies that there is something terribly wrong with you.

Recently, I was speaking with the director of international adoption at a local agency. She had just returned from a trip to China and South Korea. She expressed discouragement over the children in the orphanages in China. She said that the children's needs were much more severe than they have ever seen before.

It bugged me a little. Was she discouraged because knew they'd be harder to place? Was she discouraged because there are less "healthy" children available now? I hope it's the former, because less children being available for adoption is a GOOD thing!

She got me thinking.

When we came home from China I was racked with guilt for taking our daughter away from everything she knew. I wished with all my heart that she could be with the parents who had created her. I wished that I knew something, ANYTHING about why they abandoned her.

Last year China changed their law prohibiting citizens from having more than one child to allow them to have two children. (Still a human rights violation but at least slightly less of one.) Is it possible that if that law had been changed in 2012 our daughter could have stayed with her first family? I guess I'll never really know.

But, maybe, just maybe the explanation for less minor special needs children in orphanages is the change in the law. Maybe their families are deciding to take a chance on them. Maybe it's a sign of social change. I hope that is the case because that would be wonderful.

Autumn is not handicapped. That is the last time you will ever see me use her name and that word in the same sentence. She is not disabled, she is not defective. She is PERFECT and healthy and wonderful and she is as much my daughter now as if I had given birth to her. She is not lucky that we adopted her. A child left on a street corner is not lucky.

We are lucky to have been given the chance to have her in our family.

Everyone has something that is different about them. Everyone has special needs. Sometimes those differences are obvious. Most of the time they are invisible. Don't be afraid to take a chance and help someone.

Everyone has special needs. Every. Single. Person.

Thought Bubbles

Our little one at the beach.

Today I was at the mall with my ADORABLE three year old daughter. (Yes, I'm biased, but I am allowed to be because I'm her mother.)

A sweet old lady asks, "did you adopt her?" Sigh. Here we go.

There are times that I don't mind all the questions, I've grown accustomed. But, in this moment, I just want to sit there and have a quiet moment with my sweet little girl as we enjoy our cup of pretzel bites.

"Yes," I say and force a smile.

"From where?"        "China."

Her follow up questions get way too personal (as they often do) but I manage by giving general information about Chinese adoption and not going into anything specific about our daughter. The nice woman takes her leave. I sigh and think that could have been worse.

And then I look up.

I see a young mom with a stroller openly staring with wide eyes and an open mouth at me and my absolutely AMAZING and charming daughter. I make eye contact and she instantly looks away. I mean, her head turns so fast I'm surprised she doesn't get whiplash.

I fight back the tears.

When our family is in public, people stare. We are not all the same color. It confuses people. Our three year old also has an obvious physical difference due to a birth defect. I would have stared at her too; before she was mine. We usually handle the stares by making eye contact and smiling. It works great and eases the tension we and the gawker are feeling. This lady doesn't even give us a chance to smile. I can't tell if she's embarrassed to have been caught staring or if she's simply disgusted with what she was seeing. Maybe a little of both.

I decide that we need another strategy when plan A fails. I think of my 9 year old son and have an idea.

When we say family prayers he sometimes has a hard time focusing on the words so he started creating pictures in his mind. After we pray he will sometimes describe the pictures he drew in his mind. For example, when we pray for the homeless, "I saw a homeless man walking into a house with a thought bubble that said he was happy." Stuff like that.

It got me thinking. What if we imagine thought bubbles floating above people's heads when they stare? The idea made me giggle.  Here are some ideas for our thought bubbles:

"Wow, that little girl is really amazing."

"Look at that beautiful smile."

"How does she do that with no thumbs?"

"I wonder how hard it is to adopt from another country."

(And then I realized that "thought bubbles" is a FANTASTIC blog title.)

What thought bubbles would you imagine?